Current trends in anti-ship missile seekers include the use of remote identification of the ship as a target. This remote identification may be performed by radar or infrared imaging by sensors and processing on the missile itself. Ship defenses against such missiles include radar-directed defensive gunfire and anti-missile missiles, and also include various forms of concealment and seduction. Concealment includes use of a chaff cloud or smokescreen to mask or hide the ship. Seduction involves giving the missile seeker a more attractive target to focus on so that it ignores the ship and includes ejection of alternative targets such as decoys, as well as the use of electronic attack.
Some prior-art anti-ship missiles use simple infrared or radar homing seekers, which home on the largest-amplitude target in the sensor field of view. A simple countermeasure for such missiles is the use of decoys in the form of flares or chaff launched from the ship being defended, to provide a singular “hot spot” to seduce the missile seeker away from the ship.
More sophisticated missile seekers include infrared imaging sensors and advanced signal processing to resolve and home on a ship's distributed signature profile. These seekers tend to be immune to seduction by simple hot spot flares, and may be programmed to reject as a target any “ship” return which has non-ship motion, such as excessive acceleration or upward motion which might be associated with a flare launch.
Improved or alternative decoys are desired.